Content providers typically utilize multiple data streams to provide content to client devices (e.g., computers, servers, smart phones, tablet computing devices, internet-enabled television sets). For example, a provider may employ Scalable Video Coding (SVC) or adaptive streaming to provide a single piece of content at multiple different resolutions and bit rates to client devices. Maintaining a large number of encoded streams for each piece of content, however, may be costly due to, for example, the increased cost of encoders, rack space, maintenance and monitoring.
One solution is to reduce the number of different streams for each piece of content. However, this approach may result in an unacceptably low number of different resolutions and bit rates for a single piece of content. These and other shortcomings are addressed in this disclosure.